News you missed - Immigration

It's Gingrich's to Lose (Zogby '08 White House Poll Shows Tancredo 4th)
Washington Whispers

"Sorry, Hillary. And Big John, you might have missed your chance in 2000.

That's because a new and innovative poll from John Zogby about 2008 presidential candidates finds former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich way out front of fellow GOP-ers like Sen. John McCain and also finds moderates like former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner far ahead of libs like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Here's the unusual thing about the Zogby poll released to Whispers: When questioning likely primary voters, only brief biographies and not names were given.

In other words, voters picked the one with the best experience. Without her name recognition working for her, Clinton came in a miserable sixth out of 10.

Surprises on the GOP side: Harsh immigration critic Rep. Tom Tancredo ranks fourth, showing the power of the anti-immigrant issue.

The GOP rankings: Gingrich, 21.4; McCain, 13.3; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 11.2; Tancredo, 9.9; Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, 6.1; Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, 5.8; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, 5.6; Virginia Sen. George Allen, 4.9; Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback,4.3; Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 3.8; New York Gov. George Pataki, 2.8."[snip]

So, what’s so interesting about this poll? The comments on “conservative” forums for one thing:

"Go Newt, you've got my vote!”

“MIKE HUCKABEE FOR PRESIDENT. “

“I like Mike Huckabee. No real baggage that I know of.”

“"Zogby just wants Gingrich to run, so he will be pounded by the media for being forced out as speaker and what he was being accused of at the time. It will make him look unelectable and the donks would win then.”

Some posters believe Huckabee is a conservative regardless of his totalitarian views on banning smoking and his constant shilling for open borders, calling anyone who wants enforcement “racist”.

Some of this discussion included that there is a liberal conspiracy headed by Zogby , who is out to “get” Newt, finish him off before he has a chance.

Hardly!

Zogby and Gingrich have one special tie that binds them. Grover Norquist of the Islamic Institute.

Gingrich, along with Norquist and other open border advocates signed a letter in the Wall St. Journal last year proclaiming Bush’s “path to citizenship/amensty” for all the illegal aliens in this country is “good policy”.

Lately, Newt has done a public 180 about immigration, demanding that the borders be secured. But some of us remember him pushing all these years for looser restrictions on border jumpers along with his friends Grover and Zogby and Bush. Zogby is often invited, as is Gingrich to Norquists beltway planning sessions and Muslim promotion events.

Gingrich and Norquist have been close associates for decades.
Newt Gingrich describes Norquist as "...the most creative and most effective conservative activist in the country."

Last week, I turned on CSpan, and who was there working as an interviewer on Book Notes? Our man Grover Norquist, who seems to have his pawprints on all that is Washington DC , up to and including the White House.

To gain a better understanding of this complicated alliance and how it affects public policy today, we present the following article.
Grover Norquist's Strange Alliance with Radical Islam;

Fevered Pitch - By Franklin Foer, November 1, 2001The New Republic

[snip] During the 2000 campaign, Norquist urged Karl Rove to focus on the Muslim vote--pointing to, among other things, the thousands of Muslims in the key state of Michigan.By all appearances, the Bush campaign heeded Norquist's advice. In an admirable departure from the usual Republican script, Bush frequently integrated mosques into his platitudes about churches and synagogues. In the second presidential debate, Bush vowed to repeal the use of secret evidence, just as Norquist had promised. Bush even named Saffuri as the campaign's National Advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs.

When Bush won, Norquist credited the Muslim strategy. "Bush's talk about outreach and inclusion had extraordinary results--the Muslim community went 2-1 for Bill Clinton in 1996 and almost 8-1 for Bush in 2000," he told The Washington Times. (That statistic is almost certainly untrue, and Bush actually lost Michigan, the state where Muslims are most heavily concentrated.) Or, as Norquist put it in the Spectator, "George W. Bush was elected President of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote."

Norquist quickly set about turning that supposed electoral influence into legislative influence. One day after Bush's inauguration, he and Saffuri arranged for Muslim leaders to meet Newt Gingrich and Congressman Tom Davis, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Soon Saffuri began regularly appearing at the White House, accompanying imams and heads of Islamic organizations to discuss the faith-based initiative and concerns about law enforcement persecution of Muslims. Suhail Khan, an administration adviser who helps plan Muslim outreach, once served on the Islamic Institute's board. And at one of his regular Wednesday meetings, according
to two witnesses, Norquist announced that he had lobbied to get Khan his White House post. On the afternoon of September 11, a group of Muslim leaders happened to have plans to meet the president in the West Wing to discuss their grievances with racial profiling and secret evidence. When they couldn't enter the building, along with almost everyone else, they headed a few blocks uptown and reconvened--in the conference room of Norquist's office.

But the events of September 11 have cast some of Norquist's relationships in a less flattering light. Consider first the history and recent statements of the American Muslim Council, the organization that presented Norquist with an achievement award, and whose officials attend Norquist-arranged meetings with the Republican hierarchy. In the 1990s it co-sponsored two conferences with the United Association for Studies and Research, which, according to The New York Times, a convicted Hamas operative named Mohammed Abdel-Hamid Salah in 1993 called "the political command" of Hamas in the United States. At a Washington rally last year, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Saffuri's boss at the AMC, declared, "I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here?...Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah." In press releases and forums, the AMC has defended the terrorist-harboring Sudanese government against charges that it massively violates human rights and condones slavery. As late as June of this year, the AMC put out a press release entitled "SLAVERY IN SUDAN IS A SHAM.."

The record of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)--which, like the AMC, sends members to meetings organized by Norquist and Saffuri--is no more encouraging. When interviewed by Salon's Jake Tapper on September 26, CAIR Communication Director Ibrahim Hooper refused to condemn Osama bin Laden. CAIR founder Nihad Awad, who appeared with Bush at the Washington
Islamic Center, has argued that "[t]here is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the [1993 World Trade Center] explosion." And Siraj Wahaj, who has served as a CAIR board member, has been described by federal prosecutor Mary Jo White as a possible conspirator in the '93 bombing. As Harvard professor of Islamic studies Ali Asani has complained, "There is general concern among Muslim intellectuals about how not only CAIR but some of these other organizations
are claiming to speak in the name of the Muslim community, and how they're coming to be recognized by the government as spokespeople for the Muslim community in the U.S."

And Norquist hasn't only developed close ties to American groups that apologize for terror. He has also flacked for at least one Middle Eastern autocracy: Qatar. Eager to improve relations with the United States, Qatar worked with Norquist and Saffuri to help portray itself as a liberal outpost in the Islamic world. In April, Saffuri sponsored the "First Annual Conference on Free Trade and Democracy" in the Qatari capital of Doha, for which the Islamic Institute received over $150,000 in payments from the Qatar Embassy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Account. (Saffuri says these were reimbursements for the travel expenses of congressional delegates.) A lobbyist at Norquist's firm, Janus-Merritt, has solicited pro-Qatari op-eds from at least one conservative pundit. When the emir of Qatar came to
Washington, Saffuri hosted a Capitol Hill luncheon in his honor. And just three weeks after September 11, Norquist wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times in which he claimed that "Qatar has taken great strides to enshrine values of universal suffrage, a free press, and human rights." He continued, "[S]he really means it on being a reliable ally."

Qatar may not be Iraq, but Norquist's arguments are still laughable. Freedom House, which monitors religious liberty, rates Qatar "not free." Among countries in the Middle East--a region hardly known for its liberalism--Qatar finished in the bottom half of a Heritage Foundation "Index of Economic Freedom." Two days after Norquist's op-ed, The Washington Post reported on Qatar's refusal to support a widening of the war on terrorism to include Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or Hezbollah. And, just two weeks later, the foreign minister of Qatar--our "reliable ally"--announced that "[t]he attacks against Afghanistan are unacceptable and we have condemned them. It is our clear position."

Norquist's new associations--particularly his links to groups like CAIR and the AMC--have not gone unnoticed in conservative ranks. Paul Weyrich says, "I have on at least one occasion [confronted him] and he assured me that he knew what he was doing and that I shouldn't have any concerns." Another conservative says he told Norquist about the two organizations' statements on terrorism, but it didn't make an impression. "We can't knock it off; we want them on our own team," Norquist replied.

OUR team? That obviously does not include the American people. Some “conservative” forums are more than happy to keep quiet the voices that would expose Norquist, Gingerich, Bush, et. al.

TRackback Norquist:
The Elusive Pimpernel pushing Gingrich for President.

The pimping of the President - Abramoff/Norquist

What has the NRA got to do with Immigration and terrorism?